The agenda for the FTC’s fourth round of consumer protection and competition policy hearings will focus on intellectual property, the agency said Thursday. Highlighting the Oct. 23-24 event at the Constitution Center are Office of Policy Planning Chief Counsel-Intellectual Property Suzanne Munck and Patent and Trademark Office Commissioner-Patents Drew Hirshfeld. The third round of hearings will be Monday through Wednesday, with a keynote from Commissioner Rohit Chopra (see 1810020061).
The Supreme Court will hold oral argument in Apple v. Robert Pepper, docket 17-204, on Nov. 26, the high court announced this week (see 1810020047). Apple appealed a class-action antitrust lawsuit alleging it monopolized distribution of App Store applications.
Kano Computing agreed to change privacy practices on its website, while AT&T plans to challenge advertising industry criticisms of its "More for Your Thing" campaign, arms of the Advertising Self-Regulatory Council said Wednesday. The Children's Advertising Review Unit recommended Kano bring practices into line with a self-regulatory program and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. It said the site didn't try to obtain verifiable parental consent and there was no FTC-approved method for securing parental consent before collection or disclosure of kids' personal information. It said Kano indicated it would make such changes. The National Advertising Division said AT&T indicated it will appeal to the National Advertising Review Board. NAD said T-Mobile challenged ad campaign claims, and that some claims were supported but others were "puffery." Kano and AT&T didn't comment.
NTIA extended the deadline for comments on the administration’s privacy principles process (see 1808060035) from Oct. 26 to Nov. 9, says a Federal Register notice prepared for Thursday. NTIA began soliciting comments in late September. The agency has been meeting privately with tech, telecom, retail and privacy groups individually throughout the process.
A report Chinese spies used tiny chips to exploit networks of dozens of U.S. companies is “not true,” Apple wrote Congress Monday. Bloomberg Businessweek’s recent article suggests Chinese state-owned entities planted malicious chips that infiltrated Apple servers. “Bloomberg provided us with no evidence to substantiate their claims and our internal investigations concluded their claims were simply wrong,” Apple Vice President-Information Security George Stathakopoulos wrote. “We are eager to share the facts in this matter because, were this story true, it would rightly raise grave concerns.” The letter was sent to leadership for the Senate and House Commerce committees. Tuesday, Bloomberg didn’t comment.
The FTC will host a public workshop March 27 on consumer protection and competition for the online event-ticket market, it announced Thursday. The agency is accepting comments through Dec. 5. Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter will keynote the event, to focus on transparency, lack of ticket availability, ticket bots and the Better Online Ticket Sales Act. It will include discussion of the resale market with respect to disclosure of pricing, fees, speculative tickets and “consumer confusion regarding search engine advertisements and websites of resellers versus official primary ticket sellers.”
The Department of Homeland Security reduced the time it takes to patch a cyber vulnerability to within 30 days, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary for Cybersecurity and Communications Jeanette Manfra said in an interview for C-SPAN's The Communicators series, set to be televised later She conceded the agency struggled with patching vulnerabilities in an acceptable amount of time in the past. Shrinking the response had a ripple effect throughout the federal government, she said. The digital economy is so interconnected that cyber infections can spread quickly across the world, she said, calling cyberthreats a “constant, ever-present activity that everyone has to face.” She said the department had “limited visibility” of foreign influence campaigns in the 2016 election. DHS has worked hard in the past two years to deploy more “sensing capabilities,” particularly with state and local authorities, she said, and more than 1,500 jurisdictions participate in information sharing.
The Department of Transportation advanced plans to allow autonomous vehicles to operate on U.S. roads without features like steering wheels, pedals and mirrors. An 80-page report released Thursday details DOT’s "Automated Vehicles 3.0" policy, which emphasizes the department's authority to alter safety rules to accommodate the design request. General Motors in January filed for a design exemption for AVs. House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio, applauded “DOT’s continued commitment to getting safe and innovative self-driving cars on America’s roadways, and share in the urgency for a unified safety framework across state lines.” DOT Secretary Elaine Chao’s commitment to balancing safety and innovation “will solidify our nation's global leadership in self-driving technologies at a time when other countries are trying to duplicate the United States' success,” CTA CEO Gary Shapiro said Thursday.
There's no evidence those behind Facebook’s recent hack (see 1810010032) accessed other applications using the Facebook login, it said Tuesday. The company analyzed logs “for all third-party apps installed or logged in during the attack,” Vice President-Product Management Guy Rosen wrote. Fifty million users’ access tokens were stolen, and the platform as a precaution reset access for another 40 million. In a separate issue, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood accused Facebook of improperly collecting children’s data without proper parental consent on Facebook Messenger Kids. The group asked the FTC to investigate. The agency didn’t comment. A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement that parents, safety experts and privacy experts agree Messenger Kids is "one of the safest apps for kids to connect with their family and friends, and we also continue to support research on the relationship between technology and kids' wellbeing.”
Online platforms don’t need all user data to improve service, Apple CEO Tim Cook told VICE News Tonight in an interview aired Tuesday. “The narrative that some companies will try to get you to believe is, 'I've got to take all of your data to make my service better,'” he said. "Well, don't believe that. Whoever's telling you that, it's a bunch of bunk.” He denied any political motivation in Apple’s removal of far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and argued for “some level of government regulation” for data privacy. Internet Association didn't comment.